Special Effects

Gregory Holland wasn't sure just how long it had been going on, but one day he realized that the world didn't seem quite right anymore.

This occurred to him while standing in line at the grocery store and watching a news broadcast on one of the ceiling mounted televisions. Some man Holland didn't recognize was talking about which direction the country should be heading.

"Didn't someone else used to make announcements like that?" he said to himself.

"Excuse me?" asked the woman next to him in line.

Holland gestured towards the television. "That man making the policy announcements. He hasn't always done it. There used to be someone else.".

Holland bit his lip and frowned. "The President!" he announced triumphantly. "Didn't there used to be someone called the President who did stuff like that? What ever happened to him?"

The woman shrugged. "I'm sorry, I can't help you. I never noticed anything. Still, that word you used, President, it does sound a bit familiar. I just can't place it. Sorry."

Holland shrugged too. "Oh well, it's probably not important."

No one else in line seemed to care either and Holland dropped the subject. He didn't notice the man in the next line over who was staring at him very intently.

* * * * * * * * *

"Hey, wait up!" someone shouted.

Holland turned to find a stranger jogging up the sidewalk towards him with a bag under his arm.

"Who are you?" Holland asked.

"My name's Lawrence Enderberg," the man puffed, "but just call me Larry. I heard what you said back in that store. I recognized the same thing myself a few years ago, and I figured out why. I'd like your help so that we can get things back the way they were."

"Back the way they were when?" Holland asked.

"Back before 'they' started messing around with reality."

"Who's they?"

Enderberg glanced around and put his hand on Holland's arm. "We can't talk here," he explained. "There's no telling where they might be or how they might be listening. Let's keep walking. We need to find someplace private."

Holland glanced around at the empty streets and shrugged.

"Fine" he replied. "I'm not in any hurry to get anywhere."

"Perfect" Enderberg said.

"Excuse me?"

Enderberg pointed to a dilapidated movie theater. It had been partially torn down and boards were nailed over the doors. "That old movie theater there, that's a perfect place to talk."

They crossed the street and approached the theater. The glass cases which had once held movie posters had been smashed and the posters torn down. The boards were old and rotting. They came apart with a few good kicks and the two men crawled through a hole.

The building was dark. Only a few stray beams of light penetrated through the spaces between the planks which boarded up the windows. Enderberg led them into one of the theaters and they sat down in two of the many empty seats.

"Did you ever wonder why all the movie theaters were closed?" Enderberg added. "And why were the videotapes, the VCR's and the cameras all destroyed?"

"I don't know." Holland shrugged. "I never really thought about it."

"For the longest time neither did I. I never wondered why it was all destroyed or why most of the government and all of the army disappeared."

The army - Holland could just barely remember bits and pieces about that.

"We never noticed," Enderberg explained, "because they did everything so convincingly. For decades they mastered the arts of making lies seem like the truth so when they changed things, they did it so perfectly that we never even noticed."

"You still haven't told me who they are," Holland observed.

Enderberg glanced around the theater and leaned close to Holland. "The special effects people," he whispered very, very quietly. "They're the ones who've done all this."

"The special effects people?" Holland asked incredulously.

"Not so loud," Enderberg hissed. "Of course. It makes sense doesn't it? We let them get too good. For years and years they practiced the art of making illusions seem real. One day they just got so good that there was no difference between their illusions and reality. Do you know what happens when illusions are the same as reality?"

Holland shook his head.

"Everything becomes an illusion to them," Enderberg explained. "They manipulate the world as easily as they once manipulated their special effects. They got rid of everyone and anything who could possibly stop them like the President and the army. Then they closed down all the movie theaters and destroyed all the movie cameras so that no one could ever learn about special effects and become as powerful as they are."

"If you're right," Holland said "then there's nothing we can do. If the army couldn't stop them, then the two of us certainly can't."

"But we can!" Enderberg urged, "And I plan to do it. It's like this, we'll relearn special effects! We'll start from the beginning and work our way up. Maybe it's impossible to relearn it all in one generation. Fine, we'll do what we can and then pass it on to the next generation. Someday, somewhere, someone will become as powerful as they are and take the world back."

"But we can't do any special effects if we don't have a camera. Or are you suggesting we make our own camera?"

"That's a problem," Enderberg admitted, "but I'm sure there must be a camera somewhere. There were millions of them produced at one time. They couldn't have all been found and destroyed. There has to be at least one squirreled away in someone's attic somewhere. We just have to find it."

Enderberg lowered his voice even more. "I have books too. Books about making movies. I've read them all dozens of times. I know I can do this if I can just get a camera. I also need an assistant. It's just too big of a job for one man to do. I'd never get anywhere by myself. But the two of us, we've got a chance. What do you say?"

"I --I'll have to think about it," said Holland.

"Fine" Enderberg said. "Take all the time you need. I don't want to get involved with anyone who's not going to make a serious commitment. It's just too dangerous. Take all the time you want."

Holland nodded but deep in his heart he knew he had already decided. The magic of the movies intrigued him like few things had before.

* * * * * * * * *

"You can't possibly imagine how much I've risked keeping this thing hidden here," the shopkeeper said. Holland nodded and continued staring at the small camcorder.

They were standing in a hidden basement. Just above them a small trapdoor led to the back corner of a small, cramped pawn shop. The shopkeeper was a short, thin, craggy faced man with a pipe and a soft felt hat. He displayed his twisted yellow teeth as he smiled.

"So do you know why I kept it?" he asked smiling. "Because I knew that someday someone would pay a shitload of money for it. That's why." He laughed good-naturedly.

"That's all you need to make a movie?" Holland asked.

"Sure is. That there is a self-contained unit. Plug it into the wall and you can record with it, plug it into your TV and you can play your tapes. It's only got the one tape, though, the one that's in it. So you won't be able to keep a big collection of recordings."

"That's all right," Holland said. "Okay, I'll take it."

The shopkeeper was asking for a sum of money that was more than three years of Holland's wages and he paid it reluctantly. But he had already spent the better part of a year looking for a working camera and he wasn't about to give this one up.

The shopkeeper bundled the camera up tightly and gave him a bag for it. "If you should start making movies," the shopkeeper said softly,"and become one of the special effects men, don't forget who gave you your start, huh?"

"I won't," said Holland as he pushed his way out the door.

* * * * * * * * *

And they made movies.

They decided early on that they would have to do all their movies with stop-action photography. Not only was this a special effect in and of itself, but it allowed them to have a much wider cast than they would otherwise have. Beautiful empresses, fearsome aliens, dashing heroes, dogfights, sword fights and fist fights became their nightly fare as they labored late into the night every night to bring their miniature world to life.

When they were done, they sat on the couch and ate popcorn as the futuristic epic played itself out in front of they eyes - each character using a slightly-altered version of their own voices.

"It's a shame we'll have to erase this when we start our next movie," Enderberg said.

"Yeah" Holland agreed, "it's not fair that only the two of us should get to watch this."

"There's no way we could keep it secret if we had huge crowds of people coming over here to watch it every night," Enderberg countered.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking huge audiences," Holland explained. "I was thinking more like my girlfriend, you know, Kara. She thinks I'm not spending enough time with her, especially since I can never tell her that I come here."

"I thought we agreed that letting any more people in on this would be dangerous."

"But she's just one person and it would really mean a lot to both of us. Think of it, we'd be the first couple in years to go to a movie together."

"I don't know, Greg --" Enderberg began.

But in the end, the magic of the movies won out. It was just too much fun to watch to let it be destroyed before someone else could see it.

* * * * * * * * *

Kara smiled in delight as the small clay figures walked across the camera and she laughed out loud as they began talking in stiff, very bland voices. By the time the minuscule credits rolled across the screen, she was applauding uproariously.

"That was great!" she laughed, "why didn't you tell me you two were working on that?"

There was dead silence in the room. Kara looked around uncomfortably. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Enderberg looked at Holland. "You haven't told her?"

"I didn't want to scare her," Holland explained.

"Told me what?" Kara demanded.

"About the special effects people?" Enderberg asked.

"No," she replied softly.

So Enderberg told her.

"That's horrible," she said when he was done. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure," Enderberg said. Holland nodded.

"They shouldn't have done that," Kara said sourly. "That movie was so much fun, everyone should get to see it. In fact, I have some friends I'd like to show it to."

Enderberg's heart skipped a beat. Holland gaped. "Are you crazy?" Enderberg asked. "Haven't you been listening to anything we've been saying."

"Just hear me out," Kara said. "No one would even have to know that you two had made it. We could show it in the old movie theater. It would be just like the old days."

"It's too dangerous," Enderberg said. Holland nodded.

"You two said that the reason you're doing this is so that you can pass on what you've learned to the next generation. How are you ever going to find trustworthy, dedicated kids by sitting in this apartment all the time? Showing your movies would be the perfect screening process. A lot of my friends have kids they could bring."

The two men traded glances.

In the end, it was again the magic of the movies that won out. They just had to show it to other people. There was something undeniably fulfilling about watching young faces staring with wonder at the screen, even if the screen was only a small television that they had dragged into the theater. It was so wonderful that they even let themselves be convinced to do it a number of times.

* * * * * * * * *

It was dark in the apartment that night as they discussed the story for their next movie. They never heard the door open, but suddenly there was a man standing in the room with them.

Enderberg glanced towards him. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I'm the special effects man," said the intruder as he stepped into the light.

Holland and Enderberg gasped.

The special effects man was old and hunched with pale skin. Several dark, disk-shaped objects formed a hump on his back. He had large, round, glass eyes, like the lenses of a camera, and there were thick wires weaving in and out of his flesh. There was some sort of computer terminal with numerous buttons built into his forearm.

"You two should never have done what you did," the special effects man warned ominously. He looked at Enderberg and pressed a few buttons on his forearm. Enderberg screamed and his body suddenly blew apart, the different facets of his figure spinning and flipping around as they spread across the room like pieces of a wire-frame image.

Holland leapt out of his chair.

"You killed him, you bastard!" he shouted.

"I haven't done anything," said the special effects man. "He was just a special effect. The whole world is just a special effect. He was turning out to be more trouble than he was worth. So I cut him."

The special effects man looked at Holland. "And I think I'll cut you, too."

Holland backed away from him... "I'm not one of your damn special effects!" he shouted violently. "I'm real! You hear me you bastard? I'm real!"

"Oh really?" sneered the special effects man reaching for the computer on his wrist. "Prove it."

©1994 Dave Kirtley